‘Well?’ The woman’s impatient voice came from the stairwell again.
‘What’s the pass?’ he asked, trying to match the woman’s irritated tone.
Brexan felt the wind go out of her lungs. A password? Three floors up in the most secure building in the Eastlands and you have a whoring password? She would have to distract the sentry and give Sallax an opportunity to knife the soldier and end this absurd exchange.
She took a wary step forward; the guard drew his sword and Brexan stopped.
‘What’s the pass?’ he called down at them again, louder this time; Brexan worried he might start shouting and alert the entire building to their presence.
She’d take an educated guess; she’d been a soldier long enough. If it failed, she’d make a run for him and try to get a blade in his throat before he could scream.
‘Lafrent,’ Brexan said, the spy’s other identity, the name he was using when first she met him. It was the only one of millions of possibilities racing through her mind that had any chance of being correct. She grasped it in desperation.
Miraculously, the soldier lowered his sword. ‘Come on up.’
They climbed the rest of the stairs.
‘What’s happening outside?’ the guard asked. ‘If he’s awake and I went off for a look, he’d have my guts for breakfast…’
‘Oh, the commotion? Someone’s tent caught fire. Half the rutting camp was sleeping, and someone thought it was an attack; people kept tripping over each other trying to find water. It was a mess.’ Brexan remained in front of Sallax, effectively blocking the guard’s view of the big Ronan. ‘What room is he in?’
‘It’s just through here, the second door on the left. I have to walk you down there. He’s a bit tiresome about procedures. You know the type. I just wish-’
His final wish drowned in a gruesome rattle as Sallax’s blade took him in the throat. He fell to his knees, blood staining his hands as he clutched at the wound, and tried to swear at them, instead choking and coughing up blood that splattered their cloaks and stained the darkened stairwell. When he finally collapsed, drowning in his own blood, neither Brexan nor Sallax gave him a second glance.
‘Through here,’ Sallax said, opening the hallway door. ‘There’s no one, just an empty hallway.’
They hurried to the door the guard had pointed out. After checking to see if it was locked, Sallax leaned against it as gently as he could, sliding it inwards a crack, careful not to allow the leather hinges to creak as the door swung open. Brexan followed him through.
Jacrys’ bed was positioned in the centre of what was still, even after Twinmoons of neglect, an opulent apartment. Sallax left the torch hanging in a doorway sconce and they moved stealthily across the floor.
For a moment, Brexan feared they would find the chamber empty and Jacrys, somehow warned of their approach, vanished down a hidden stairway, but as they reached his bedside, she saw that he was there, snoring away, sleeping the deep sleep of one who felt safe. Jacrys didn’t stir, even as Sallax gestured that Brexan should kill him without further delay. In the torchlight, she could see the sentry’s blood drying on the big man’s fingers.
She drew her knife and checked her position. She thought briefly of Versen, and Lieutenant Bronfio, whose murder had started this whole adventure for her, and drew a breath to strike. It had to be deep, into the heart, and enough to shock him awake for long enough to see his killer – but not give him time to cry out. Use two hands, she thought, and squeezed the wrapped leather grip with all her strength. Do it now, Brexan, she thought, just do it – but then she hesitated, backing away a step and staring down at the sleeping man’s face. What’s the matter with you? she asked herself. Just kill him and go home. This man is a monster, the reason Malagon knew where to send the Seron who took you prisoner and broke your cheek. He killed Bronfio and made sure Versen was delivered into enemy hands. Just kill him!
Sallax struck while Brexan was still caught in her crisis of conscience, slamming his own knife into Jacrys’ chest. He held it for a moment as the spy woke with a gasp and stared, eyes wide in horror, into the faces of his killers. Sallax lowered his face and growled, ‘This is for Gilmour.’
Jacrys’ mouth moved, but he couldn’t manage to make a sound. His eyes fluttered and his nostrils flared with his efforts to breathe, and then he tensed as his body went into spasm. As consciousness fled, so the rigid tension dissipated.
Sallax released the bloody hilt, leaving it standing erect in the spy’s chest. ‘Done,’ he said. ‘Let’s get out of here.’
Brexan nodded, staring down, waiting for Jacrys’ eyes to close. She was remotely aware of Sallax crossing the room to retrieve the torch and then coming back.
He bent to examine a stack of papers spread across a wooden table. ‘Come look at these,’ he called in a whisper.
‘What?’ She watched Jacrys’ eyes catch the firelight, his mouth still stuck somewhere half-open and half-closed. A trickle of bloody saliva drooled down his chin as he fought to stay alive. She wondered if he could see her, if he recognised her, or if he was just staring at the faded tapestries that hung around the walls.
‘Over here,’ Sallax interrupted. ‘Do you recognise these?’
She pulled herself away from the dying man and, gathering her wits, moved to stand beside Sallax. ‘They’re maps.’ She bent over the table to look at them more closely. ‘This is Pellia.’
‘And these?’ Sallax shuffled two or three others to the top of the stack.
‘That’s the river, and these are the heights above Welstar Palace. That mark right there must be the keep.’ She ran her finger over a semi-circular area around the castle. All this is a Malakasian encampment. It’s the biggest army I’ve ever seen.’
‘Good rutters,’ Sallax said under his breath. ‘We have to take these. Look at the marks on there. These are maps of the river. Look at these boxes and circles. They must be places along the waterway for barges to load and unload whatever it is that Carpello is shipping – was shipping – from Strandson and Orindale.’
And look here,’ Brexan pointed to another map. ‘This is the Great Pragan Range, the mountains on the southern border. I wonder what’s happening down there.’
‘I don’t know, but let’s take them all; we can study them as closely as we like later. But for now, let’s-’
A clamour rose from a lower floor, a wildly ringing bell, as if someone was trying to rouse the entire city against a pending invasion.
Sallax and Brexan stopped, their eyes meeting across the wooden table. ‘What’s that?’ she asked nervously.
Sallax turned back towards the spy and over his shoulder, Brexan could see what Jacrys had been staring at. A trail of blood, viscous, black in the half light, led from the spy’s empty bed to the wall, where, in front of one of the ancient tapestries, hung a bell rope, dangling from an old system of pulleys and cables that obviously ran to the servants’ quarters and the scullery below.
Jacrys tugged the rope with all his remaining strength, sitting with his back propped awkwardly against the wall. A grim smile split his cadaverous face: the triumphant grin of one who has emerged victorious despite overwhelming odds. He twitched as waves of pain assailed him, but it didn’t change the smug assurance that, try as they might to escape, there would be no leaving the palace alive.
‘Come quickly!’ Sallax barked, no longer trying for stealth. ‘We have to get below the first level before anyone gets to those stairs.’ He scooped up as many of the maps as he could, folded them under his arm and charged through the door into the hallway.